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Selling the future : the perils of predicting global politics / Ariel Colonomos ; translated by Gregory Elliott.
Van Pelt Library JZ1242 .C6513 2016
Available
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Colonomos, Ariel, author.
- Series:
- Comparative politics and international studies series
- The series in comparative politics and international studies
- Standardized Title:
- Politique des oracles. English
- Language:
- English
- French
- Subjects (All):
- Forecasting--Political aspects.
- Forecasting.
- Economic forecasting--Political aspects.
- Economic forecasting.
- International relations--Forecasting.
- International relations.
- World politics--21st century--Forecasting.
- World politics.
- Social prediction--Political aspects.
- Social prediction.
- Physical Description:
- xiv, 225 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm.
- Place of Publication:
- New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2016]
- Language Note:
- Translated from the French.
- Contents:
- Part 1 The Future As Narrative
- 1 At the Centre of the World: Oracles, Seers and Prophets 17
- The advantages of ambiguity 20
- Superstition 21
- Gaming 24
- The saturation of signs 26
- Networks of oracles 27
- Of prophets, paths and signs: the performance of prophecy and the testing of prophets 30
- 2 Telling the Future Today 33
- Speaking with one voice? 33
- Experts and the market 40
- The world of indicators 45
- Political risks and world order 48
- Unveiling a story 51
- Part 2 Seeing Far
- 3 The Blinkers of the Social Sciences 61
- Linearity 63
- Chronicle of a collective denial: How not to predict the fall of the Soviet Union 72
- Reversals of epistemic fortune in the Arabian Deserts 79
- The Chinese horizon of expectation 87
- 4 Engineering the World 93
- Experts: what do they do? 94
- Where do they come from? 98
- The topography of knowledge 102
- A virtual community 104
- The lexicon of futurism 107
- The life and death of futures 116
- The lagging behind of the future 119
- 5 The Risk Market: Credit Ratings 125
- A Balzacian novel 126
- Normalising capitalism 127
- The small world of the agencies 129
- Rating the future 132
- An indeterminate stability 136
- Do credit ratings delay the future? 139
- The inertia of grand narratives 141
- The accuracy of the future 145
- Part 3 Getting It Right
- 6 Right and Wrong Futures 149
- Two cases of denunciation of a wrong future 149
- The truthfulness of the future 151
- The burden of inaction 155
- An incentive to originality 157
- 7 Responsibility for the Future 161
- 'The future is the moment that got lucky' 161
- 'I am a lie that tells the truth' 164
- The public sphere of futures 166
- A sphere of reputation 170
- Looking ahead? 172
- 8 The Future of Norms 177
- The world order 178
- The dialectic of the state 180
- 'Moral revolutions'? 182
- Portents of tomorrow's justice? 184
- Tomorrow's priorities 185
- A global observatory 187.
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 195-217) and indexes.
- ISBN:
- 9780190603649
- 019060364X
- OCLC:
- 928607994
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